Volkswagen Blues

Vagabonds, travelers, and explorers are everywhere in the novel. From the 17th-century French explorers, to the emigrants on the Oregon Trail, to the Ernest Hemingway-esque rambler, to Jack and the girl and even the Volkswagen itself—nearly every character is “on the road” or has been. Indeed, in Chapter 29, Volkswagen Blues acknowledges its ghostly shades of Jack Kerouac and his pioneering road-trip novel, On the Road.

This vagabond motif intersects with Jack’s belief that “writing was not a means of expression or communication but rather a form of exploration” (63). Like journeys or explorations, narratives move through time and space and are vehicles through which characters, as well as writers and readers, gain knowledge and experience. Prior to his journey with La Grande Sauterelle, Jack apparently remained close to home, “shut […] away inside a book” (98), and he has not succeeded in discovering his identity through his writing explorations. Only after he becomes a “vagabond” himself and makes a personal journey that frees him from the cultural narratives he has internalized can Jack write a novel that truly explores his personal experiences and identity.

During its lifetime, the old Volkswagen has been marked with graffiti, including “a mysterious inscription in German […]: Die Sprache ist das Haus des Seins” (59). These words by the philosopher Martin Heidegger translate as “Language is the home of being” and speak to the many moments in the novel when Jack struggles to express himself in English. As they venture out of francophone Quebec and into the anglophone United States, Jack leaves his language home; at the border, he can’t communicate with the immigration official until he has “constructed the sentence in his head” (64).

Although the people they encounter on their journey often speak French, the bull rider’s wife does not. Jack tries “to tell her they were from Quebec […], but his English was even more infantile than usual” (141). La Grande Sauterelle, who has a much better grasp of English, steps in and “explained to the woman that they were going to take a look at Chimney Rock” (141). La Grande Sauterelle repeatedly speaks up for Jack, sometimes because of his timidity, but often because she is more comfortable crossing language barriers than he is. Moreover, she occasionally prefers English to French. When they pass a road sign that reads, “Soft Shoulder,” the girl says she doesn’t care for its French counterpart, “accotement mou, but whenever she saw Soft Shoulder, she thought about all sorts of pleasant things” (70). La Grande Sauterelle is at home in different languages, indicating, once again, that she represents hope for the reconciliation of cultures.

The narrative frequently refers to La Grande Sauterelle as “the girl,” and perhaps this is because she is not only an individual character but also a symbol of multicultural Quebec itself. The child of an Indigenous woman and a white, francophone man, she incorporates the mixed-race nature of Quebec society—a society that has recently tried and failed to define itself as a purely francophone nation. When Jack exhorts the girl to embrace the diversity she embodies as “something new,” it is, at the same time, a narrative call for Quebec to do likewise.